Empathic Conversations

In this article, we explore our approach to enabling empathic conversations in our design research, between researchers and participants and among the wider client and design teams. Using a case study of a recent project exploring patient support networks, we look at the important roles continual contact, engaging interview materials, and visually capturing and communicating play in enabling empathic conversations, that can generate rich, in-depth insights for design.

The full article is available as a PDF here, and as an article on Medium here.

At the ServDes2018 in Milan, the global academic Service Design conference, Bas Raijmakers was invited to be Chair of the Learning & Practicing track, with Ana Meroni and Alessandro Deserti. The paper Learning and practicing in service design analyses the contributions to this track. They can be summarised in a few directions: 1) service designers take up the role of educators within…

A STBY case study is published on the website of ExperienceFellow. STBY used the mobile ethnography tool ExperienceFellow in order to get a better understanding of the perspectives of Dutch people on health and sustainability in food.

The article shows how diverse private and governmental parties worked together in order to better understand the eating habits and attitudes of Dutch people.…

The practitioners’ handbook: This is Service Design Doing, applies service design in the real world. It includes short descriptions of some of the core service design methods.

We contributed to the book by writing about two case studies, together with our clients Google and Vodafone. The first case is about the Service Experience Design methodology Vodafone developed and fine-tuned. We…

As the world becomes increasingly global and interconnected, more organisations must take the local and global into account when thinking about strategy and innovation. This sounds straightforward and sensible, but how do enterprises…

In this article in Form magazine, Marie de Vos describes the process behind ‘What Design Can Do Challenge’ of February 2016, which asked what design can do for refugees. The refugee crisis certainly belongs to the category of so-called wicked problems, that contain so many unpredictable interdependencies and unknowns that they resist solutions using any single model or traditional…

We’re very excited to have published Viewfinders: Thoughts on Visual Design Research, exploring the rich potential photography, film and beyond hold for design research. Bas Raijmakers and Samantha Miller co-authored and edited a collection of writing that includes learnings from STBY projects, inspiration from fields such as documentary film, and relevant project examples…

Marie de Vos co-authored an article Giving Disruptive Innovations a Chance in the Service Design Journal ‘Touchpoint’. Why do promising innovations initiated inside companies and other organisations fail to make it implementation? There is a difference between the current perception of the road from idea to implementation, and the reality of how new concepts are genuinely created, developed and delivered. What shape does this path take, and how can designers actively…

The latest edition of Dude (the Dutch designers magazine published by BNO) is curated by Ellen Schindler from Kossman.dejong and includes an interview with STBY. The interview explains the background and profile of STBY, and specifically zooms in on the global design research network REACH we initiated in 2008 to cater for our international clients. The interview, authored by Viveka van de Vliet, describes us as ‘world-class specialists in design research’, who keep…

Orchestration

Bas Raijmakers co-authored an article about ‘Orchestration’ in the latest issue of CRISP magazine. “So many, you can’t get around it, So complex, you can’t get under it, So diverse, you can’t get over it, This is a chance to orchestrate your way out of your constrictions!” The article explores how ‘orchestration’ functions in Product Service System (PSS) development, helping to align collaborators and achieve harmony in a system where complexity can and should be embraced. A pdf of the full article is available here, and the complete CRISP magazine #5 is available here.

Embracing Complexity

Marie de Vos co-authored an article about ‘Embracing Complexity’ in CRISP magazine #5: “Product Service System development is hard, but pretending complexity disappears when you ignore it solves nothing. PSS design teaches designers to embrace complexity and discover the rich insights that lead to excellent PSSs.” Issues with complexity are not limited to technology, but have to do with social reactions and behaviours brought about by a particular system. The pdf of ‘Embracing Complexity’ is available here, and the complete CRISP magazine #5 is available here.